Alan Furst - The Foreign Correspondent

For a moment, Weisz couldn’t speak. Finally, he managed to say, “Thank you.”

“She’s in danger, Weisz, you’d better be aware of that. And she won’t be safe until she can find a way to get out of there.”

For the next few days, silence. He went up to Le Havre for a Reuters assignment, did what he had to do, then returned. Every time the office telephone rang, every evening when he stopped at the desk of the Dauphine, hope rose inside him, then evaporated. All he could do was wait, and he’d never realized how poorly he did that. He spent his days, and particularly his nights, preoccupied with Christa, with Brown, with going to Italy-back and forth, and nothing he could do about any of it.

Then, late on the morning of the fourteenth, Pompon telephoned. Weisz was to come to the Surete at three-thirty that afternoon. So, once again Room 10. This time, however, no Pompon, only Guerin. “Inspector Pompon is gathering the dossiers,” he explained. “But, while we’re waiting, there is one thing we have to clear up. You’ve withheld the names of your editorial committee, and we respect that, it’s an honorable instinct, but now, in order to go forward with the investigation, we’ll need to interview them, to help us with identification. It is in their interest, Monsieur Weisz, for their safety as well as yours.” He slid a tablet and pencil over to Weisz. “Please,” he said.

Weisz wrote down the names of Veronique and Elena, and added the address of the gallery, and Elena’s room. “They’re the ones who’ve been in contact,” Weisz said, then explained that Veronique had nothing to do with Liberazione.

Pompon showed up a few minutes later, with dossiers and a heavy manila envelope. “We won’t keep you too long today, we simply want you to look at some photographs. Take your time, study the faces, and let us know if you recognize any of them.”

He took an eight-by-ten print from the envelope and handed it to Weisz. Nobody he’d ever seen. A pale man, about forty, sturdily built, with close-cropped hair, photographed in profile as he walked down a street, the shot taken from some distance away. As Weisz studied the photograph, he saw, at the extreme left of the image, the doorway of 62, boulevard de Strasbourg.

“Recognize him?” Pompon said.

“No, I’ve never seen him.”

“Maybe in passing,” Guerin said. “On a street somewhere. In the Metro?”

Weisz tried, but he couldn’t remember ever seeing the man. Was he the one they especially wanted? “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him,” Weisz said.

“And her?” Pompon said.

An attractive woman, walking past a stall at a street market. She wore a stylish suit and a hat with a brim that shadowed one side of her face. She’d been caught in full stride, likely walking quickly, her expression absorbed and determined. On her left hand, a wedding ring. The face of the enemy. But she seemed so commonplace, in the midstream of whatever life she lived, which simply happened to include employment by the Italian secret police, whose job it was to destroy certain people.

“Don’t recognize her,” Weisz said.

“And this fellow?”

Not a clandestine photograph this time, but a mug shot; front face, and profile, with an identification number across the chest, below the name Jozef Vadic. Young and brutal, Weisz thought. A killer. Defiance glowed in his eyes-the flics could take his picture all they wanted, he would do as he liked, because it was the right thing to do.

“Never saw him,” Weisz said. “Better that I haven’t, I’d say.”

“True,” Guerin said.

Waiting for the next photograph, Weisz thought, where is the man who tried to enter my room at the Dauphine?

“And him?” Pompon said.

Weisz knew who this was. Pitted face, Errol Flynn mustache, though, from this angle, he could see no feather in the hatband. He’d been photographed sitting on a chair in a park, legs crossed, very much at ease, hands folded in his lap. Waiting, Weisz thought, for someone to come out of a building or a restaurant. And good at waiting, daydreaming, maybe, about something he liked. And-he recalled Veronique’s words-there was a certain set to his face that could well be described as “smug, and sly.”

“I believe he’s the man who interrogated my friend, who owns the art gallery,” Weisz said.

“She’ll have her chance to identify him,” Guerin said.

Weisz knew the next one, as well. Once again, the photograph had been taken with the entry of 62, boulevard de Strasbourg in the frame. It was Zerba, the art historian from Siena. Fair hair, rather handsome, self-assured, not too troubled by the world. Weisz made sure. No, he wasn’t wrong. “This man’s name is Michele Zerba,” Weisz said. “He is a former professor of art history, at the University of Siena, who emigrated to Paris a few years ago. He is a member of the editorial committee of Liberazione. ” Weisz pushed the photograph back across the table.

Guerin was amused. “You should see your face,” he said.

Weisz lit a cigarette and moved an ashtray toward him-a cafe ashtray, likely from the nearby Surete cafe.

“And therefore,” Pompon said, his voice rich with victory, “a spy for the OVRA. How do you call it? A confidente ?”

“That’s the word.”

“Never would have suspected…” Guerin said, as though he were Weisz.

“No.”

“Thus life.” Guerin shrugged. “He’s not the type, you think.”

“Is there a type?”

“If it were me, I’d say yes-one gets a feel for it, over time. But, in your experience, I would say no.”

“What will happen to him?”

Guerin thought it over. “If all he’s done is report on the committee, not much. The law he’s broken-don’t betray your friends-isn’t on the books. He did no more than try to help the government of his country. Maybe doing it in France isn’t technically legal, but you can’t tie that to the assassination of Madame LaCroix, unless someone talks. And, believe me, this crowd won’t. Probably, at the worst, we’ll send him back to Italy. Back to his friends, and they’ll give him a medal.”

Pompon said, “Is it Zed, e, r, b, a ?”

“That’s correct.”

“Does Siena have two n ‘s? I can never remember.”

“One,” Weisz said.

There were three more photographs: a heavyset woman with blond braids, wound into “Gretchen plaits” on the sides of her head, and two men, one of them Slavic in appearance, the other older, with a drooping white mustache. Weis had never seen any of them. As Pompon slid the photographs back in their envelope, Weisz said, “What will you do with them?”

“Watch them,” Guerin said. “Have a look through the office, at night. If we can catch them with documents, if they’re spying on France, they’ll go to prison. But new ones will be sent, in some new fake business, in some other arrondissement. The man who impersonated a Surete inspector will go to prison, for a year or two. Eventually.”

“And Zerba? What do we do about him?”

“Nothing!” Guerin said. “Don’t say a word. He comes to your meetings, he files his reports. Until we’re done with our investigation. And, Weisz, do me a favor, and please don’t shoot him, allright?”

“We won’t shoot him.”

“Really?” Guerin said. “I would.”

Later that day, he met Salamone at the gardens of the Palais Royal. It was a warm, cloudy afternoon, rain coming, and they were alone, walking the paths lined by low parterre and floral beds. To Weisz, Salamone looked old and worn-out. The collar of his shirt was too large for his neck, there were shadows beneath his eyes, and, as he walked, he pressed the point of his furled umbrella into the gravel path.